An ink jet print head cartridge designed to provide full colour prints conventionally has a plurality of nozzle rows, one nozzle row for printing each of the colours Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Conventional print head cartridges having this arrangement are operated such that each nozzle row partially contributes to the printing of each line on a page. Put differently, each full colour line that is printed on the page receives ink from every nozzle row of the print head cartridge.
For example, in printing a colour image, one or more nozzles of a Cyan nozzle row of the print head cartridge prints the Cyan coloured dots that are needed for a first line on the page. Subsequently, one or more nozzles of a Magenta nozzle row of the print head cartridge prints the Magenta coloured dots that are needed for this same first line on the page, followed like wise by one or more nozzles in the Yellow row and the Black row of the print head. In this manner, the first line of the page receives ink from each of the C, M, Y and K nozzle rows of the one print head cartridge, whereby all necessary colours for that first full colour line of the page are reproduced.
In the past, ink jet printing systems employed a scanning type print head cartridge in which a print head cartridge that is significantly narrower than a width of the page (often 1 or 2 nozzles wide, but many nozzles tall) is scanned/moved across the width of the page to eject ink to all necessary positions on the page. Such systems have had a reputation of being slower than other methods of printing, such as a laser printing system.
To address the speed disadvantage of scanning type ink jet printing systems, pagewidth ink jet printing systems employing a print head cartridge that is stationary, and which spans an entire width of the print media onto which an image is being printed, have been developed. The printing speeds of such pagewidth ink jet printing systems are comparable with those of laser printing systems. However, it would be desirable if the printing speeds of such pagewidth ink jet print systems could be still further increased without compromising on print quality.